


If It's Raining

by Odamaki



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Emotional Warmth, Feel-good, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Sex, Sex Is Fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 13:32:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: It was not that they had intended to sleep together, it was just boredom and, in part, the weather. Interminable rain. Days of it, ruining the holiday. It makes the trailer a claustrophobic little tin but going out is too much of an effort.Sprawled out full length on the couch, the resources of their four magazines and the deck of 51 cards exhausted, Duo says, as a by the by, “Hey. Do you wanna fuck?”





	If It's Raining

It was not that they had intended to sleep together, it was just boredom and, in part, the weather. Interminable rain. Days of it, ruining the holiday. It makes the trailer a claustrophobic little tin but going out is too much of an effort. 

Sprawled out full length on the couch, the resources of their four magazines and the deck of 51 cards exhausted, Duo says, as a by the by, “Hey. Do you wanna fuck?” 

Trowa is laboriously stitching stars on a new costume, but this sounds like a better use of his hands. He considers. “Wouldn’t that make things awkward?” 

“Would it?” Duo looks at him upside-down over the arm of the couch. “It’s just a fuck. It’s raining.” 

Trowa supposes people have fucked on slimmer excuses. “Now?” 

“Well, I’m busy,” Duo says slowly. “Pencil it in after lunch, say?” 

“Sure.” Trowa picks up his needle again and pushes it into the fabric. He leans back to dodge the pillow aimed at his head and grins. 

“I may not be your first choice,” Duo growls, “But don’t even kid yourself that I’m not a more interesting way to spangle your pants than that.” 

Trowa dumps the sewing on the table, and leans back in his chair, nice and easy. “Am I yours?” 

“My first choice? Wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of saying so.” Duo wrinkles his nose and grins. “Y’bastard.” 

Trowa smirks. The rain rattles off the tin roof, a ratta-tatta-tat that makes you go a little mad when it won’t stop, and a little dreamy. “So how does it go?” he asks, at length. “This just-a-fuck?” 

“Ooh, well,” Duo hisses in air between his teeth like a mechanic sizing up a nice little low-milage convertible, “I know what I like. Guess I never really asked you what you like before.” 

“I’m flexible.” 

“A fact that has not escaped my notice,” Duo agrees, oozing slightly over the arm of the sofa towards him. “Is that an invitation to bend you into interesting shapes while I have my way with you? No?” Duo flashes his teeth. “I’m flexible too, if it matters.” 

“I usually just wing it.” 

“Oh? Didn’t realise you saw Heero much.”

Trowa smirks again and dabs his lip with his tongue. He’s thinking about it. “Do you want to start?”

Duo crooks a finger and beckons. “You want to come over?”

“No, I’m good here. I can see.” Trowa gestures to the chair he’s in, the open space between them. “Front row seat.” 

“Oh, really?” Duo chokes, and then pushes up from the sofa, muscles in his forearms bunching as he rises, serpentine, amused. “Do I get music?” 

“I’m just the audience,” Trowa replies, “I’m sorry, music and styling’s really more part of your job.” 

Duo snorts. “You lazy fuck,” he says, giving an experimental little groove. “This is really fucking hard without music. And usually I’m drunk. You’re getting a one-off special, Barton, I hope you appreciate that.”

“Most exclusive show in the world.” 

“Anyone ever told you that you’re fucking ridiculous?” 

Throw folds his arms. “No, I’m just ‘ridiculous’. You could be fucking ridiculous, but that’ll depend on how good this is.” 

Duo throws back his head and laughs, filling the whole caravan with it. Then he finds the beat of the rain on the tin and begins a kind of easy soft-shoe shuffle, hamming for Trowa exuberantly.

Trowa sits with one hand over his mouth, trying not to be too obvious, and equally trying not to let the hand slide up and cover his eyes out of vicarious embarrassment. 

“Ooh, you love it,” Duo teases. He shimmies towards him, pulling his shirt loose, the youngest oldest swinger in town. Trowa can’t look him in the eye. He bites his lip, belly shaking. “I’m too fucking hot to handle,” Duo crows, romping with his hips. He gives a truly obscene leer that seems to possess the full length of his body, and comes jerking towards Trowa with every step. 

“Stop,” Trowa begs, giving up. 

“Can’t stop me now, I’m in the groove. I’m grooving.” Duo parties over, hands extended and pulls Trowa from his chair. The man is almost helpless, shoulders shaking with a laughter he can’t quite get out. 

“Stop,” he says again. 

“Only if you dance with me.” 

Trowa takes an enormous breath, rolls his eyes as if he didn’t instigate the madness, and then swoops in. Duo yelps, grabbed in three places at once, which is one more than Trowa has hands for but the man’s creatively using a thigh and Duo hadn’t expected that. 

“The heck!?” 

“It’s a tango,” Trowa says in his ear, nice and low. He has incredible balance. Somehow he manages to bow Duo nearly horizontal to the floor and then sweep him up again sternum to sternum so that their chests clap, and Duo’s both weak at the knees and a little breathless. 

And Trowa’s still doing that thing with his thigh. 

He brings them into a tight sway, smug with himself. “Don’t quit the day job, Maxwell. Maybe leave the showmanship to me.” 

“Yeah, you can show me your manship,” Duo’s mouth says, without permission, and the tango promptly dissolves into a fumble when Trowa loses it again. 

“Ugh, you’re heavy,” Duo complains, nudging Trowa’s head off of his shoulder. “And giggly. Did you slip yourself something without my noticing?” 

Trowa shakes his head. “I’ve been stuck indoors too long,” he replies, untangling their legs and gently nudging Duo’s chin with his fist. He shakes his head and echoes ‘manship?’ to himself, the same hand falling to Duo’s shoulder to steady them. Duo shakes his head at his own blunder. 

Up close he can see the faint white nick of a scar in the lobe of Trowa’s ear, the soft hollow of his jaw and the very faint stubble that starts right there on the joint and swathes down across his cheek. Enough to result in stubble rash; or maybe not, but enough to provoke the thought. 

“Hey,” Duo says again, and Trowa looks down. “Are we kissing? Or is that too much?” 

“If it’s just a fuck, then it’s just a kiss,” Trowa says after a thought. “I’m ok with it if you are.” 

“Fine by me.” 

“Alright. Should I, or do you want to?” 

“I mean-”

“Ok, well-” 

Somewhere in the disorganisation of hands and tilting faces, Duo’s nose lightly bonks against Trowa’s and then it’s Duo’s turn to become useless. 

“Stop that,” Trowa chides. He has one hand on the back of Duo’s neck and the other on Duo’s cheek and Duo leans back, hopelessly jellified. He tries to pucker up again and fails. Trowa chides him again. “How am I supposed to kiss you if you keep sniggering?” 

“Huuu,” Duo says, pushing his lips out around the laugh, which only makes it worse. 

“Right, come here you,” Trowa says, grabbing Duo’s head in both hands and yanking him close. He plants his lips square on Duo’s cheek and blows a fat wet raspberry. 

Duo hollers. He catches Trowa around the waist and they wrestle, Duo attempting to tip him onto the floor, and Trowa attempting, of all things, to stick his tongue somewhere. 

“Ah, not in my ear! Barton, you’re gross! You’re gross! Disgusting clown habits!” 

“Blehlelelele,” Trowa threatens, and then gets another raspberry in on the back of Duo’s neck. Really, the height difference is intolerable. Nearly tilted into a full fold, Duo grasps Trowa’s knee with both hands and hikes it up, twisting until even Trowa can’t manage to stand on one leg. They go down with a bump onto the floor, making the furniture rattle. 

“You’re insane,” Duo says fondly, untangling himself, “Nuts.” 

“You can’t dance.” 

“I do the horizontal hula well enough, buddy. Just you wait and see.” 

Plastered flat on the floor, Trowa only waggles both eyebrows deviously at that, and then Duo kisses him to make him stop. Not abruptly. He gives Trowa and his eyebrows plenty of notice, starting with a look that says, ‘Alright, pal, here we go then,’ and then when Duo leans down for it, it’s with a little bobbing motion, like his head’s on some slightly imperfect targeting system. 

Trowa goes ‘huh’ with one last hurrah of the laughter, and submits to being kissed finally. 

Duo sprawls out on top of him, one knee hitting the floor on either side of Trowa’s hips, and takes his time.

There’s something nice about kissing a friend- no stakes to it, no strings attached. They know each other well, and it’s been a long time since they passed anything new between them. The kiss is neither an electric thrill nor a revelation. It is the opening of an album and the sharing of a collection. It’s the question, ‘Have I ever played you this song?’ and the answer, ‘No, but I’ve heard you mention it’. Neither man is in possession of a home of which to say, ‘come over and I’ll show you around the old place,’ but the sentiment each holds for his body is the same. 

They roll into it, leisurely, finding all the ways in which to be comfortable. Gradually, Trowa sits up and Duo sits back, a fistful of Trowa’s sweater in each hand. Trowa’s palms are warm against his lower back, the forefingers just stealing their way under the edge of his shirt, upwards in a caress at first and then the arc in reverse, pushing softly under the waistband of his jeans. 

“Hm,” Duo says, and feels Trowa smirk against his mouth. 

Not to be outdone, he rustles his hands down to Trowa’s hem, and lifts it, drags his knuckles up Trowa’s ribs bringing with it the ruck of fabric and pushing it into Trowa’s armpits until the man gets the hint and lifts his arms. Duo sweeps the sweater up and over and then lets go, leaving him head and arms inside of it. 

“Hey!” Trowa protests. 

“But you’re so much cuter this way,” Duo laughs, sticking a finger in Trowa’s navel for the satisfaction of making his belly hitch. Grumbling, Trowa shakes himself free, the static giving him flyaways. He growls, but is prevented from affording Duo immediate payback by the way Duo’s gaze is inching down his chest. It’s a gaze with a lot of ideas packed behind it, all of which are explicit. It makes some other bits of Trowa hitch, without even needing to be touched. Duo’s eyes snap back up to his with a grin. 

Trowa growls again, and gathers Duo into another, less innocent, wrestle. He nips at the corner of Duo’s throat. Duo simply laughs and prods him, saying, “The hell are you doing?” 

“I’m going to eat you.”

“You’ve been hanging around the lions too much,” Duo complains and then yells when Trowa manages to distract him with one hand long enough to push Duo’s shirt up with the other and plant a wet snog into his belly. It keeps him laughing while Trowa undertakes a diligent bit of business in relieving him of both jeans and pants. 

“Fuck me, that’s cold,” Duo yelps, the moment his buttocks touch the uncarpeted floor. He sits up, kicking his legs free of his jeans and then rises. “Alright, time out, you animal.” Trowa takes the hand extended and pulls himself up to standing as well. 

“Your floors are cold.”

“Sorry, they don’t see a lot of action.” 

“It’s ok. But I vote we turn the heater on and take this business to bed.” 

“Seconded. I’m not sure I can face having to mop the imprint of your butt off of my hardwood anyway.”

“You’ll be lucky to get my butt anywhere near your hardwood at this rate,” Duo grouses, hopping from one foot to the other. He leads Trowa in a shamble through the trailer, pushing through the door that separates the living area from the bedroom. It doesn’t open onto a large space, but there’s room enough to fit a bed that’ll sleep two (even if one of them is Trowa Barton) a narrow closet and a heater. The window permits only the grey light of the rain outside, but they chase the dreariness away with the lamp, which throws a buttery light over the bed and everything else in there. 

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Duo says, going up on tiptoe. 

They progress the matter of taking their clothes off. It’s something Trowa particularly likes about sex - just being nude. It’s a great equaliser, he finds. Everyone looks a little silly trying to take their socks off. Everyone’s got a wonky bit they’d rather you didn’t look at too closely; a scar, or a mole, or an unevenness. A bad tattoo. Duo’s got one of each, but no shame whatsoever. It’s quite distracting. 

Trowa kisses him again to touch the missing back molar, resting the tip of a finger in the divot left by a once-broken collar bone. 

“Strap,” Duo says, feeling Trowa’s attention pause there. “You know.” 

“Fucking things always managed to rub me,” Trowa agrees, re-living the tightness of the suit’s harness across his chest. “Right under the arm and round to… well.” 

“Aww, boo,” Duo laughs. “Should have used sticky plaster.” 

“That would’ve gone down well. ‘Tell Oz to wait a moment, I need to tape my tits before battle’.”

“Lucky for me, you’ve still got ‘em.”

Trowa runs his hand down to trace the faded tattoo. “Did you do this?” 

“Yeah, it’s fucking awful, right? I can’t draw for shit. It was supposed to be a skull. I was a kid and having… an angry day.” 

Trowa cocks his head. “You really can’t draw for shit,” he chooses to say. 

“Ah shut it. Where are yours?” 

“I haven’t got any,” Trowa says, looking down at himself. “All my distinguishing features are au naturelle.” 

Duo pings the elastic on Trowa’s underpants and says, “Lose these then. It’s not fair - you’ve seen mine.” 

“Brace yourself,” Trowa says. The top of his head brushes Duo’s skin as he bends over, the tickle making Duo squirm. Trowa pushes his pants down to the ankle and then straightens, kicking them free and into the void under the bed. Straightening, he moves back a fraction to stand fully upright, in all sense of the phrase, and allow for comparison. 

Duo doesn’t bother with that exactly, his attention jumping straight down for an eager eyeful. There is the inevitable mixed emotions of confirming the disparity between them. Trowa’s bigger, albeit not disproportionately so, and the size of it evokes a weird blend of minor envy and a jiggling excitement. But it’s the bare style of it that make Duo’s brows rise. He looks up, eyes widened to halfway between ‘yikes’ and ‘oh-ho!’.

“You’re circumcised!?” 

“Aw, shit,” Trowa says, putting his hands on his hips and looking down at himself chidingly. “I am?”

Duo obligingly snickers. “Makes you a double first for me.” 

“Does it?” 

“Sure. Never fucked a clown before either.” 

Trowa starts to crowd him back, and then a flicker of something like wariness crosses his expression. “Not a problem, I hope.” 

Duo grins, exuding warmth and extending hands to coax him closer. “Not with your dick, anyway. Nothing you got down there I can’t work with,” he says, wriggling back on the bed and patting the covers by way of encouragement. “Long as it doesn’t honk when I grab it.” 

Trowa tips his head back and laughs without restraint, “No, just watch out - if you squeeze it, it squirts.” And then he loses it so hard at his own joke that he’s defenceless. Duo finds it a complete delight. He grabs him by the hips and topples Trowa on the bed, still ha-ha-ha-ing.

“You’re a fucking nerd,” Duo accuses, kissing his open mouth and rolling over him. “A clown nerd with a filthy sense of humour.” Trowa’s belly wobbles when he laughs, and then tightens again when Duo kisses the crease of his hip. 

“Hmm,” Trowa agrees. 

“Next time you’re undercover anywhere,” Duo mouths out between low kisses, “I’m gonna be hard pressed not to just yell ‘look out, it squirts!’ just to blow your cover.” 

Trowa starts a laugh that turns into a long sigh, and for a little while, there’s no talking at all. He sinks back into the pillows, buries his nose in them and inhales the smell of the fabric. The sheets have been on the bed a week, and the cotton holds that special non-smell detectable only to the hindbrain. ‘Boy’ it registers, and ‘mine’, and it makes the basic creature in him happy. 

The rain rattles against the window above them, and for a moment, he’s lost in feeling. The drops and the glass cover a whole spectrum of colours; the sky behind it all is the pinkish grey of a dove, and the drops run from gunmetal to silver, to the bright white of reflection picked out with the orange of the inside lights. They pick out the colours of Duo’s skin too, painting the hollows of his shoulders a deep fawn and the tops of them coral pink, and his lips darker still. All of it pale compared to the red of the bedclothes. 

Trowa groans. Duo teases. 

He poses, knowing Trowa is looking, pausing to kiss the side of it and look up, knowing the light is catching his eye and putting mischief in it. 

Trowa has one arm thrust up under the pillows beneath his head, the elbow at right angles. It’s a lazy position that gives him purchase to roll into the warm wet of Duo’s mouth. Duo’s hands wrap his ankles, only an arbitrary control on movement, fingers finding the grooves on either side of each achilles. 

“Ticklish?” Duo pauses to ask, sneaking a finger under the sole of one foot. 

“No,” Trowa says, after he’s swallowed. 

It’s weird and lovely. Duo tilts his left foot back with his hand and pushes the ball of his thumb into the arch, running it up to the toes and back, and back and forth. The other hand swoops up the inside of the Trowa’s legs to the crook of his hip and then the root of his cock. 

“Mm,” Trowa says. Duo’s fingers move from his foot to go incey-wincey spidering up his calf, into the soft hollow of his knee, where middle and fore -finger delve suggestively. 

“I have-“ Trowa starts, and then breaks off with a shiver. Duo surfaces with a soft noise. 

“Hm?” 

“I have… hold on.” Trowa flips over, feeling down the side of the bed and under it. Pressed against the bedclothes, his cock throbs like a bruise, right through to the backbone. 

It takes him a moment of fumbling to get the toolbox out. Duo plants a warm hand on his back, crawling up to see. Trowa flicks the catch open and pushes the lid back, spilling items. 

“Uh…” Duo says, catching sight of a spanner. 

“Not that.” Trowa levers back the top layer and, abracadabra, reels out a zig-zagging ribbon of condoms, the end of which he tosses back into Duo’s hands. 

“Listen, I’m a goer, but I don’t know if I’ll get through all of these suckers …” 

“Ha ha. …Oh for fuck’s sake, where’s the lube?” 

He has to swivel around to get both hands down into the tool box, less than dignified, to drag out the items that have rolled into his way. He discards a manual and a can of linseed oil under the bed and then holds one hand aloft in triumph with the plastic bottle in his grasp, like a collapsed Statue of Liberty. 

“You know,” Duo says, taking it, “I always thought you had got it all together somehow. It’s real nice to know you’re still a disaster like the rest of us.” 

Trowa props his chin on one hand and regards Duo over his shoulder. “It’s all a cunning disguise. Need a hand?”

“Nope. You just keep looking pretty. I’m sure I can figure this out…the hell?” 

Trowa contrives to do his level best, burying a smirk in his shoulder as he watches Duo, who has only just realised that the bottle labelled in no language he knows. 

“It’s lube.” 

Duo is scrutinising it anyway, one leg tucked under the other and seemingly guileless of his spare hand cupping his own arousal. “You just pulled it out of a toolbox with wood varnish and shoe polish. If I’m gonna put this on my dick I’m gonna check it’s not Russian superglue first…” 

“It’s in Greek,” Trowa says, endeared. Duo raises an eyebrow at him. “Promise it’s just lube.” 

“Hrm.” 

Trowa wiggles one foot at him, in case that’s what gets Duo interested, to no reaction. Trowa frowns. “Enough ‘hrm’. Come on, I’m waiting.”

Duo unfolds, the cap snicking open against his thumb. The squeeze of liquid satisfies him that it’s not super-glue after all, and it glides between his fingers propitiously. 

“Jeez, you’re demanding.” 

“You like it.”

“You could be right.” The lube makes a solid thunk as Duo plants it on the flying shelf below Trowa’s window for ease of access. “Ok, come here.” 

The bed dips as Duo shifts closer, gorilla-like on the knuckles of one hand, the other held up to preserve the lube. Trowa returns the Duo’s earlier posing with a little of his own, letting his eyes do all the suggesting over the curve of his shoulder. 

His coquetry is evidently a distraction; as Duo leans in, his foot collides with the toolbox. “Ow! Son of a-! Don’t laugh!” 

Trowa disobeys, with great pleasure. Duo grumbles back up onto the bed next to him, first punting the toolbox and its clutter further under the bed. 

“Is this what you get up to, huh, left all alone? Sniff some shoe polish and lie back to… think of mimes? Whatever weird clown shit you’re into.” 

“Jealous?” 

“Of what? The mimes? Pshaw. After what I’m about to do, they won’t even get an honourable mention in your dirty little fantasies.” 

“Who says you’re not already the star of my dirty little fantasies?” 

Duo looks two parts shocked and equally delighted. “Trowa Barton, why didn’t you say? I’d have poked you sooner.” 

“You haven’t poked me at all yet.” 

“Patience, patience,” Duo chuckles, leaning down briefly to press lips against Trowa’s neck. “Poke…” 

Despite all the stupid talk, Duo’s kept enough presence of mind to have kept the lube rolling on his fingers and although Trowa braces for a cold touch, it’s not so bad at all. 

This is another thing Trowa likes about sex; the unknown quantity of a new person to have it with. After a while the act of putting one thing in another starts to become routine, but it never quite fails to surprise him how something as basic as an unknown hand can shake things up. It’s as telling as a handshake. Whether the touch is cold or warm, or hot. Or damp, or rough. How much strength they put into it and the degree of control they have over that strength. Some psychologist could no doubt make a living judging peoples personalities over how they put a finger in an ass, Trowa muses. 

True to his nature, Duo doesn’t give the act too much importance. Why should he? Trowa’s made no secret ever of the fact that he’s got a sex life. The foreplay is just a formality, like small talk. Something that he’s never been very good at, in truth. 

Duo toys. He ducks and slides his finger, until he finds an angle and an opportunity that Trowa isn’t expecting then with a 1-2-oops, he’s in. 

“Ugm,” Trowa says. 

Duo snickers. “Alright down there?” He rummages a little like a kid with a goody-bag, stealing any focus that Trowa would have had for an answer. A curl, a slide and - ding-dong, Duo’s fingers collide on a sensation that makes Trowa grunt again. 

“Aha, hello,” Duo says, smug. Trowa’s eyes slip shut, or almost. The world narrows to the white of the headboard through the thin blur of his own eyelashes, and the throb and pull of arousal. He sprawls, resisting the urge to sneak a hand down his belly too soon, resisting the urge to move at all, but rather just swim on the feeling wherever Duo takes it. What seems like only seconds later, Duo’s breath and voice are warm by his ear. 

“Hey, am I doing all the work here?” 

“Humour me a little,” Trowa says, flexing down the whole length of his spine as Duo presses a little harder. The electricity of it is enough to make the nerves around his scalp tingle with the sudden flush of new arousal. 

“Alright, alright. Say when.”

Duo kisses his shoulders, his spine, amusing himself with some pattern of dot-to-dot which Trowa can only guess must be the freckles on his back. He flinches slightly when Duo lays his teeth into the muscle, just playing, and then arches into the touch, as Duo’s tongue traces the bite. 

“Up,” Duo says, withdrawing his hand. “Up now.” There’s an urgency to his tone, and peeking under his arm as he rises, Trowa catches a glimpse of the length, heavy and tight against Duo’s belly. 

Trowa stretches slowly back onto his knees, bowed on his elbows. 

“If you had a tail, it’d be wagging.” Duo catches his hips with damp fingers. He twitches when Trowa reaches behind to control it, and as the burn and sink and stretch goes on, Trowa regrets not having any mirrors in his room. He gets the picture at an awkward angle; Duo’s jaw has fallen slightly open, the muscles of his face soft except for the hitch of his breath and the intermittent tightening around the eyes with each deeper push. His eyelashes flutter slightly, and Trowa wishes he could both stay like this and somehow reach to brush them with his thumb, and kiss the softness of his mouth. 

Instead, he lowers his head and rocks back into the push, shaking a little swear of surprise out of Duo. Trowa grins into his forearms and does it again, rolling his body in one long, practiced undulation. Duo’s fingers tighten on him and, perhaps grinning as well, Duo rolls back. 

It’s easy as sin. They know one another too well, and find a rhythm quickly and without words. Faster, now, to match the rattle of water on the metal roof above, panting wet clouds of their own into the still room. The bed creaks, their bodies thud. Duo’s voice cracks on a moan. Trowa chokes on some noise of his own, spits on his hand and fists his cock hard. The spit lasts only a few strokes, spreading away into a friction he doesn’t mind. The hastiness, the callouses on his fingers add a sweet fury to it. It can’t all be soft. 

Duo’s fingers have dug half-moons into his skin, as if Duo knows this too. The rope of his hair escapes from his back, bumping into Trowa’s side as Duo bows forward, one hand feeling down Trowa’s belly. He finds Trowa’s hand and wraps it, pumping too. 

“Come on, go on, go on,” Duo murmurs, tangling their fingers together. 

They’re dragged across the threshold, after the other, in a manner that abruptly throws Trowa back to some early experience of free fall. The sharp contraction of muscles, the intake of breath, the rush, and then the sweat surreal float back to normal.   
___

The rain thins for a little while and then comes back, and a long stretch of the afternoon just trickles away while they lay in bed, letting the sweat dry. Duo is quiet; he often can be, Trowa’s found. The guy gets ansty left to his own devices, like he has a kind of separation anxiety to the whole of the human race, but he’s not beyond being able to settle. He’d have bene a damn poor choice to invite on this trip if that were the case. 

At any rate, the just-a-fuck over, Duo is content to be lazy. He lies on his belly, fiddling with the radio and going through the same round of crackling channels and static. They smoke. 

Cathy tells him off for smoking indoors but it seems contrary to ritual not to light up after a good bounce. Duo agrees, and they open a window as compromise, letting in the humid air and petrichor.

“‘Sides,” Duo points out reasonably. “Can’t smoke outside - it’d get soggy.” 

They mess around, lighting them end to end, look Cathy- no hands, and spill ash on the bedspread. Trowa scrubs it with the heel of his hand, and it sinks into the fabric. “That’ll stink,” Duo comments.

“It all needs washing anyway,” Trowa replies. Including himself. A quick scour with his t-shirt has removed the worst of the proof, but the insides of his thighs and his stmomach still feel tacky. 

“Rain, rain go away, come on Trowa’s washing day.”

“We did.” Trowa leans across him to ash his cigarette, but then stubs it out unfinished. “I’m going to shower.” 

Indolent, Duo watches him with catlike eyes as Trowa gets up from the bed. It’s a good angle to view him from. Trowa stretches as he ambles out of the bedroom. 

Duo says, “You know the bathroom is the other way?” 

“I figure… why waste water?” Trowa replies, pushing open the door to the trailer. He looks out into the sheet of rain. “Want to join me?” 

Duo raises an eyebrow. “Looks cold.” 

“Refreshing,” Trowa corrects, sticking a hand out of the door. “It’s a bit stuffy in here.”

The water is cool, but it isn’t cold. He extends his arm out, glancing around the deserted sodden meadow, and then steps out.   
___

Trowa fills most of the doorway, head ducked slightly to avoid banging it on the frame. Duo pulls a long drag from his cigarette and holds it in his mouth, drinking it all in. He sits up as Trowa steps out, waiting for the bark of shock at the cold, but Trowa simply takes a second step and then a third out onto the grass, the base of the trailer and the doorway capturing him in a snapshot from the mid-thigh up. The light outside is milky, muting everything, making the colours as nameless as they are. 

Trowa raises his arms to wipe his face, tilting his head back and the rain runs down his shoulders and his legs. Duo chokes out his mouthful of smoke. Trowa turns at the noise, amused. 

Busted. 

“Come on, put that out and get down here,” Trowa calls. He’s already soaked. He sweeps his wet hair back from his face and embraces the rain. 

“You’re insane. You’ve cracked,” Duo says, though he doesn’t mean it. Instead he thinks he’s never seen Trowa look so alive, and he’s glad to be there to see it. He’s glad to be allowed to see it. With that thought in mind he puts the cigarette out on the side of the caravan and leaps out onto the wet grass with a yell. 

The rain douses him at once, a hundred fingers that seem to jab the heat out of his skin where it slaps against his body. Duo hollers, slipping on the grass. The whole hillside is slick and muddy from the constant downpour and his heel goes from under him, nearly landing him on his butt in a perfect pratfall. Trowa grabs his wrist at the last minute. 

“Mind, it’s a bit wet.” 

“No shit!”

“Idiot.”

Duo stoops, tearing up a handful of grass, dripping soil and flings it at Trowa, already dancing away. 

“Don’t start something you can’t win, Maxwell.”

“I’ll start what I damn well want,” Duo grins, tearing up more grass. It’s been too long; they should have gone out sooner. He’s a little mad and giddy with the sudden expanse of sky and fit to do something wild. 

Trowa squares up before him, and Duo copies his stance, both vibrating at one another like a couple of dogs. And then the wildness hits and they’re off, haring around the trailer in a chase-me-charlie with no discernible rules or end beyond yelling and running and slinging any ammunition they can lay a hand on.

They get the trailer between them, and begin a round of peek-a-boo, ducking and diving around the corners. Duo dings a clod off earth right off of a vanishing buttock and relishes the yell. He can’t remember the last time he had so much dumb fun. He crouches by one of the wheel arches, prepared to belly under the trailer and improve his collection of grass stains or equally bolt back around the corner. He’s lost track of Trowa, who can move quietly when he wants to, and the anticipation makes bubbles in Duo that keep trying to escape as giggles. 

A shadow warns him just in time to roll away, yelping delightedly “No!” as Trowa drops over the side, skids and goes down in the mud. 

“Fuck!”

Duo rounds a one-eighty and stops to find Trowa rising, his hands and knees and chin and cheek browned, like a patchwork cow. Duo roars, laughs until the tears prickle, and he’s too helpless to run when Trowa catches him. 

Trowa prods him all over, taking revenge and encouraging the laugh all in the same friendly act of bullying.

“You looked, you looked so fucking stupid,” Duo tells him weakly, patting Trowa’s face and smearing the mud, but Trowa’s eyes are bright with good humour about it, so he kisses him. It tastes of Earth. Duo streaks the mud like war paint until the rain finally gets a grasp on it and washes it away down Trowa’s body. Duo pushes the other man’s hair back, kissing up, hitching upwards into the seat of Trowa’s hands, and then yips when Trowa sits him on the big wheel arch. 

“That’s cold!” 

He doesn’t have long to complain about it though, and by the next time there’s any space between them for talking, the metal’s warmed under his ass, and he’s forgotten about it. Hard to be bothered by such meaninglessness when he’s under the umbrella of Trowa’s body, and the other man has a hand on him, stroking with terrible patience. 

It’s been minutes. Or seconds. Or hours. Duo doesn’t know, only that he’s itching for more. Trowa doesn’t need telling. He pulls back slightly, the slip of cooler air between them making them both shiver.

“Sit tight a second,” Trowa says.

“What?”

Without warning, Trowa pushes his foot onto the rim of the tyre and heaves himself up. Taken aback, Duo grabs his hips for stability, and just about has another hysterical bout of the giggles because it’s right there in his face, yet somehow this isn’t an invitation to grab it. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Duo says, craning to see and not look, and not get poked in the eye with a boner either. Trowa scrabbles about at the glass, as inelegant as a spider stuck to a windshield, and then abruptly drops back to the grass. 

“There,” he says simply. He has the lube in his hand. 

Duo leans one hand on his knee and cocks his head. He widens his legs a little, as a question: My turn?

Trowa waggles the bottle at him. “My thoughts exactly.” 

Duo slips from the arch to the ground, turning in the same smooth movement. He grips the side of the trailer, wondering if his ass is as flat and white as it feels, if it has a red stripe on it from the edge of the wheel arch. Maybe it does, because he hears Trowa give a little ‘uff’ of amusement, and then there’s no sound but the click of the plastic opening. 

“This is insane, you know,” Duo pauses to tell him, leaning into the first finger. “It’s raining.” 

“That’s why.” 

Duo rocks on the balls of his feet, elbows on the arch so he can mop the water from his face. His hair is heavy with it, dragging on his scalp down his back. With his free hand, Trowa moves it over his shoulder, onto the metal that Duo is leaning on, where it puddles. Duo grips the braid, squeezing a run of water down the tire, and sighs for the second finger. 

It’s like fucking in a shower, he decides, only better because the floor is soft enough to dig your toes in, and there’s no worries about knocking your elbows on the walls or falling out. It’s worse because God is a stingy bastard and won’t hardly turn the hot water on, but then again, maybe that’s one-up on fucking in a warm shower when the hot water runs out. 

That’s a mood killer for sure. 

“Pay attention,” Trowa says, curling his fingers. 

“Give me something to pay attention to then,” Duo says, tilting his head back. “Hello, are you there? My ass is bored.”

The fingers glide away, and Trowa bites him on the shoulder, just a nip.

“You’re the worst brat.” 

“Because. I want. The brat-wurst,” Duo quips, and promptly regrets it when Trowa is laughing too hard to get it in straight. 

“It wasn’t that funny!” 

“It was awful,” Trowa agrees, pushing Duo’s head away and down. “Don’t look at me. I can’t look at you, I’ll laugh.”

“Fucking charming. Your bedside manner sucks.” 

“My apologies,” Trowa says, and then adds, more feelingly. “Sorry, I’m getting cold.”

Duo snorts, “Tuck it in then!” 

He does. It’s a slow burn, a ring of ignition that throws warmth up Duo’s core to his throat. It kills the stupid in him, leaving only a sweeter intensity. “Ah, that’s it,” he murmurs to the ground. “That’s it.” 

Trowa, fucking perfect gentleman he’s suddenly decided to be, roots in and pauses, hips still and hands sliding up to tweak one nipple and then the other, mouth warm on the back of Duo’s neck. 

“Oh fuck…” Trowa’s fingers on one side slip, and the other side stick, and Duo shivers from head to heel, twitching his hips back. “Go on.” 

The drag and push that ensues is equal to the hush around them, but only half the beat of the drumming on the rooftop. A mouth on his ear, and then Trowa straightens, leaving Duo unexpectedly bowed into the wheel arch and exposed. Trowa rocks from behind, no faster but with an unexpected firmness that sends thunder to Duo’s blood. 

“Oh fuck!” 

Duo leans his head on his forearms, and groans as Trowa rocks into him again. The rain hits his back like it’s digging knuckles into his sore muscles to loosen them, and between the cradle of his own arms, it’s warm. The smell of the wet earth rises, strong and green from where their heels have crushed the grass. He breathes in the tinny hue of wet metal and the stronger base odour of the rubber in the tyre in front of him. Lowering his head he catches a drag of his own body; clean sweat and sex, a little sweet and mostly animal. 

Trowa leans forward then too, shielding him from the rain, his hand squeaking around seeking purchase on the glass. The soil squishes between Duo’s toes as he digs them in, pushing back against Trowa’s weight, canting his body to get it right. Equal and opposite, Trowa does the same. 

“Oh fuck, right there,” Duo breathes, tipping his head back into Trowa’s shoulder. “Right there.” 

His hair clings across his forehead, a line of it crossing his cheek towards his lip until it is washed back to his ear. Duo opens his eyes to the great arc of sky overhead, but can’t look for long. The rain is a hypnosis and falling like static, all the lightning on the inside. He can feel Trowa digging his heels in, using his height to drive upwards, deep, a little rough, but the roughness only puts a bright lasso around the pleasure, spot-lighting it. 

Duo has a premonition of another time to come, his knees pressed to wood and the smell of sawdust in the air. The heat from the lights and the big dark silent tent, a colossus umbrella on some other rainy night.. “Ugh, I’d let you do that,” he blurts aloud. Trowa says nothing, too busy panting with his mouth shut, too busy keeping them upright and rubbing his hand down over Duo’s belly to his cock. 

“Don’t tease. Don’t tease…” 

He doesn’t. He has callouses on his hands and they’re different to Duo’s; they catch a little on his skin, and that lasso just shines all the brighter. 

“You’ve got great hands, you’ve got a great cock,” Duo says, getting rain and hair in his mouth. He plants a foot against the wheel, trusting Trowa of all people to have enough fucking balance even in the mud slick to keep it going, and Trowa proves it with a clap of his hips that abruptly makes the stars come out. 

It should be embarrassing, Duo thinks, dazed and still moving. His cum is already winkling down the side of the trailer like something alive, the passing evidence of an unseen snail maybe, but Trowa’s still going, and it’s making his brain short-circuit. 

“Trowa-”

He can’t complete the word. The other man bucks into him with a sudden energy that knocks the breath right out of Duo’s lungs, once more, once more, once more, once more -

— And then comes with a cry blurred by lips pressed to the crown of Duo’s head.

Short of breath, they lean, shoulders squeaking against the trailer, as they try and slip free of one another but at the same time not sink to the dirt. 

“Fuck…” Duo summarises, knees jittering. Leaning against the trailer next to him, Trowa closes his eyes and nods, still twitching at the peripherals. His chest is stained across with a red-pink blush that makes Duo suddenly and inordinately pleased with himself. Trowa cracks an eye and gives him a sidelong look, dark green and meaningful. 

“Yeah,” Duo says, folding his arms around himself. His nipples rub against his arms. “I’m cold.” 

Trowa nods again, gesturing him ahead, and they squelch back to the door and into the dim cave of the trailer, dripping puddles. 

“Use the shower,” Trowa says, trying to rub the muck from his feet and taking up the dishcloth to do so. “Go on.” 

Duo makes a meaningless noise in his throat and scuttles into the bathroom, leaving the door open, why not, and hustling himself into a rush of hot water that seems to burn whatever the temperature controller says. 

____

He comes back into the living room looking and feeling like he’s dropped half the world off of his shoulders somewhere, the collar of the robe folded up to brush his ears. 

“That’s mine,” Trowa says, put out. He’s mopping up the worst of the flood they brought in from outside, though the door still swings ajar. 

“It’s so soft,” Duo purrs, bundling the robe closer. Trowa can see bare skin in the gap down to Duo’s waist at the minimum. “I found it in your drawer.”

“I know, that’s where I left it. Are you wearing anything under that?”

Duo just smirks and looks untrustworthy. “It’s soft,” he repeats. He prowls over to inspect Trowa’s work and then pushes his shin with clean toes. “Is there anything to eat?” 

“I’ll make something,” Trowa agrees. “I’m hungry.” 

“I’m starving.” 

“No shit,” Trowa agrees, “We skipped lunch.” 

“I can live with that,” Duo tells him, and goes to sit on the table and get in the way before Trowa’s even moved into the tiny kitchen space. “What are you going to make?” 

“Not sure…” Trowa tugs open the fridge and peers inside. 

“There were eggs,” Duo says, hopefully. 

“Saving them for breakfast. Sandwich?” 

“Yes!” 

“Two?” 

“Trowa Barton, you say the sweetest things to me. A-plus turn on, would bang you in the rain again. After the sandwich,” Duo corrects, “If it’s a good one.” 

Trowa snorts. His eye catches a gleam of white thigh under the robe, and it feels wrong to be wearing jeans again after spending most of the afternoon rollicking around naked. He’s glad he didn’t really bother with a shirt. Duo whistles to himself, working at his wet hair with a towel and his fingers, working the knots free. Trowa saws bread into doorstops and works butter into all the corners, and makes no bones about watching. 

“How can you stand having all of that?” 

“This? Eh, part and parcel of me now,” Duo says, inspecting his split ends. He strokes them, mouth working slightly. “It’s just like…my thing. Y’know. Like your lack of foreskin.” 

Trowa’s knife slips on the tomato, and it’s only reflexes that pull his thumb out of the way. Duo grins. 

“Sorry.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“Only if you bleed on my sandwich,” Duo teases, and Trowa snorts again. He lets the topic of Duo’s hair slip away back into the undercurrent of whatever this is between them. He’s learned, long ago, to tell when Duo’s laughing and joking because he’s got nothing to say, and when there’s really too much to be said. He appreciates it, to be honest. He’d rather let Duo take the conversation off into nonsense if the alternative is to fall off the see-saw into something horrible, or else stew around awkwardly trying to ignore the elephant in the room. 

Still, he can’t help but stop to watch Duo braid it again. He sits, feet dangling and crossed at the ankle, as if he wants to cross one ankle onto his knee but is aware that the robe would fall far open if he did, head tilted to one side, lips pursed to let that nothing-tune escape. Barely more than a whisper.

“What?” 

“I learned how to do that on a horse, once,” Trowa says, going back to slicing salad. Duo raises an eyebrow, but he misses it. “I was just trying to work out how you do it behind your own head.”

“Muscle memory, duh. You just… learn.” Duo shrugs. “And I’d take offence at being called a horse, but sure, I’m a wild stallion, baby.” 

“You’re an idiot.” 

“That too. Is that relish?” 

“Cranberry,” Trowa says, checking the label. “We ate all the pickle. This do?” 

“Yeah,” Duo says, more softly, and when Trowa looks up, he’s smiling. 

____

They’re beautiful things, the sandwiches. Duo takes the plate and saliva rushes under his tongue as soon as he gets a whiff of it. “Wow…” 

He has to admit that a part of him, probably about 10% in fact, only accepted this holiday gambit on the basis that the food on Earth is better and as a man escaping the culinary torment of Catherine Bloom, Trowa would be out to get the Good Stuff. He appreciates that right here and now, it’s stupid as hell because the food in the trailer is the same stuff they’ve been eating for the last couple of days. Somehow Trowa still manages to rustle around the leftovers and turn out a stack of sandwiches like a work of art. 

Duo hadn’t even known they had brie in the fridge. 

Trowa is already chewing stolidly through his with no outward appreciation whatsoever. Duo sighs and pushes the first sandwich into his mouth, and then sighs again because his mouth is too full to say ‘wow’. 

“That good?”

“Yuhf.” Duo replies, unabashed. On a global scale of sandwiches, it’s probably nothing special, but hell, they’ve spent most of the day perking up his appetite one way or another, and besides, turkey is special. Premium. Only rich assholes chow into something as extravagant as real turkey on L2, where the average schmo can count himself lucky to get what’s affectionately known as ‘lab slab’. It’s better now. Things have calmed down a little bit; there’s more food available to more people, but still… even basic lunchmeat on Earth hit some button inside of him that says, in big black letters, ‘you’re fucking lucky to get this kid. Enjoy it while it lasts.’ 

Big button, to say all of that. 

Trowa says ‘heh’, part disagreement, part fondness, and starts his second sandwich. He’s inhaled the first while Duo was distracted. Duo’s watched documentaries. Barton’s like one of those sea fish. He just drifts up to food and then- schlomp! It’s vanished. Duo knows he tends to hork back his food if it’s there and he’s hungry, but not like that. Anyway, he’s trying to slow down a little. Remind himself it’s just hunger, not starvation. Hell, even Heero seems to take time to chew, and he’s a gobbler as well. Chang’s weird. Doesn’t gobble but somehow speeds through his meals anyway with a terrible efficiency. 

Only person Duo’s ever met to start at the left side of the plate and work methodically towards the right in a line. Duo always expects him to get to the other end and ping to indicate that someone should reset him for the next course. 

“What are you laughing at?” 

“Nothin’.” Duo leans into the counter and picks up his second sandwich. The first bite is better even than anything he’s had so far. Sweetness from the relish, salt from the crust of the bread, which crackles as he sinks his teeth in; the wet crunch of lettuce and, best of all, the unctuousness of butter and brie.

When he looks next, Trowa’s plate is empty. Like completely; there’s not even crumbs left, except for the few on the table that Trowa’s picking up with a licked thumb. 

He licks it again. And smirks. 

“What?” Duo asks. 

“You’re making noises.”

Duo pauses chewing, brie melting into the pocket of his cheek. “Am I?” 

“Think I’m getting jealous of a sandwich.” 

“Come on,” Duo says. He’s not aware of having made any noise. Not a dirty noise, anyway. Can’t have. Might have. “I’m just appreciative.” 

“So I can tell,” Trowa says, with a glance to see if he really can tell; one that makes Duo shift his weight from one foot to the other and his cock throb. Licking his thumb again (needlessly, Duo thinks, there can’t be any fucking crumbs left by now) Trowa leaves the tiny table and closes the single pace it takes to cross the kitchenette and enter Duo’s personal space. Duo leans into the counter, and swallows. 

“First I bore your ass, now outdone by my own turkey sandwich.” 

“You did uh,” Duo falters, his banter thrown off because Trowa has just dropped to one knee and skimmed a hand up the inside of the robe and he’s still got half a sandwich, but now he’s also got a hard-on. 

“Ok, but, I’m still- come on, let me finish eating first,” Duo says, torn between two compelling though unequal distractions. Trowa sniggers along the inside of his thigh and then licks him anyway. Duo makes a strangled noise. 

“You could put the sandwich down?” Trowa suggests, nosing along somewhere intimate. 

“Hell no,” Duo says. His fingers have tightened through the bread and are jammy with cranberry sauce. “Hell no, carry on. I’ll catch up.” 

He crams the last bit in his mouth and tries to engage, but his hand goes slipping away from him when he clasps the counter, smearing butter on the wood. And then he can’t even swear - his mouth is too full. 

He groans instead, and nearly chokes. 

Trowa tilts back onto his heels, pulling away to tell him, “You shouldn’t put so much in your mouth.” 

Duo expresses his opinion on that hypocrisy through use of gesture alone. Or tries to. Before he can finish, Trowa’s started again. 

He’s never going to have a turkey sandwich better, Duo realises, than the one he eats with his hair smelling of rain, wearing this robe, with a hot laughing mouth around his cock. It’s pure bloody hedonism. 

Possibly he’s never going to have a better blow-job either. 

It’s over almost too quickly, orgasm rising in a steady ebb and dying away again gently, rather than the slam to his system of before. Trowa presses his forehead into the edge of Duo’s hip, one hand taking himself over the edge with a sudden cessation of breath and and a shudder, and no noise at all. 

Duo breathes out. The robe clings a little to his back and his ass where he’s broken a sweat again, though not enough to be unpleasant. Instead it’s like they’ve dialled back time a few minutes and he’s damp from the shower again. 

Trowa rises and nonchalantly picks up Duo’s plate. 

“Finished?” he asks. 

Duo wipes his buttery, cranberry fingers over Trowa’s chin, and then sniggers and kisses it off, a comfortable lethargy seeping into his bones. 

Trowa just dumps the plates in the sink and looks satisfied. 

Outside it’s a strange kind of dark. The clouds are low, and they’ve muffled the sunset, simply thickening through all the colours of a bruise into nighttime. Trowa pulls the door shut with a click. No need to look at that. 

He comes back to find Duo still sagging on his elbows. 

“You glued to the counter now?”

“No, but you’re gonna have to give me a moment…Ah, hell,” Duo says, yawning huge enough to bring tears to his eyes. “You’re an animal.” 

Trowa smirks. “You weren’t complaining.” 

“You’re still an animal. Not complaining just makes me a fool,” Duo says, grinning lopsidedly, and with no real meaning to his words. All he wants is to keep the conversation open. 

But Trowa just shakes his head slightly, a smile toying at the corner of his mouth, and they find themselves grasping for the thread of what to do next. 

“Is it too early for bed?” Duo asks, fending off another crocodile yawn. “Or a nap…” 

“It’s nearly ten,” Trowa says. 

“How the hell is it almost ten? No wonder I was starving.” 

“That and the orgasm.” 

“Three,” Duo corrects, not even pretending he isn’t damn pleased about that. He eyes the sofa and contemplates just dumping his body down on it rather than go through the whole rigmarole of pulling out the folding bed and getting the bedding and making it up. 

“You can bunk with me,” Trowa offers, into the quiet. “If you want.” 

Duo cocks his head at him. “Yeah?”

“Well, I figure it’s still raining, but if you want to call quits…” 

“What?” Duo repeats, squinting at him. “Oh. Right, it is still raining…” 

“Easing off, but I guess you’ve still got time to try and best the turkey sandwich blow-job.” 

Duo’s leer is ruined by another jaw-cracking yawn. “Ugh, no dice. I’m done dry. Give me a couple of hours at least.” 

“Wasn’t a bad way to kill the time,” Trowa agrees. 

“I’m sleeping in this,” Duo says, by way of agreement, He bundles the robe closer around himself, exalting in the softness of it against his body and the way it smells. No wonder fancy ladies are always shown in massive fur coats, he thinks. Even the fake stuff feels decadent and naughty on a bare ass. 

He rolls into Trowa’s bed, digging his shoulder in and working his chin into the pillows, dog-like to get comfortable. Trowa follows more slowly, pausing to make the effort to clean his teeth and put out the lights. The bedroom falls into the long shadow of the night, the window vanishing into the extent of the darkened walls. 

“You in?”

“Mm,” Duo agrees, with his eyes shut. This is definitely a big step up from the sofa-bed. 

The mattress dips as Trowa stretches out beside him, fidgeting the covers about. He tends to sleep warm, Duo guesses, the way he pushes the blankets down to his hips. Duo sleeps cold, normally. The rain brings the temperature down with the dark, and it’s noticeable how they've had the windows and doors open all day for a change. The pillows smell of the outdoors, and of them. 

Trowa bumps against him slightly, trying to find space for an elbow. Duo rolls over to make more space and they lie there, each on his back, aware of the other, with nothing but everything between them. Duo stares into the white void of the thrumming ceiling and then suddenly it seems ridiculous that the man has delivered him a supreme turkey sandwich and an A+ blow job, but now things have devolved to this sorry silence. 

“Hey,” Duo says, to the void. “Can we get cosy? …Or would that be too weird?”

Trowa shifts in the bed next to him. There is a pause. “How do you mean?” 

“How do I mean ‘cosy’, or how do I mean ‘weird’?” Duo asks, lifting his head from the pillow. Trowa is a hazy profile in the dark, even with Duo’s good night vision. 

“Either,” Trowa offers, playing it safe. Duo can’t make out where his eyes are looking, up or sidelong. 

“‘Cosy’ as in… if I roll on you in the night, would you kick me out of bed?”

A prompt reply. “I wouldn’t kick you out of bed.”

“... Ok. so then… ‘weird’ as in, if I did that now, would it be too much for this ‘just-a-fuck-because-it’s-raining’ situation we’ve got going? Make things awkward come morning.”

There is another pause. “You want to cuddle?”

Duo drops back onto his back, wounded. “Ah hell, make it sound lamer, why don’t you, Barton…”

“Sorry, I just hadn’t expected… Yes.” 

“Yes?”

“It’s the opposite of ‘No’.” 

“You’re not funny,” Duo complains. The bed dips again, creaks, and then Trowa sinks lower in the bed and he’s at Duo’s arm, and then he’s under it. 

Duo has to admit to himself he’d had other ideas, but Trowa’s arm across his stomach, his head tucked into the crook of his side, is also rather pleasant. Duo shifts to orientate his body towards him, and for the hell of it, runs his fingers into the short hair at the back of Trowa’s head. He remembers the kiss on his scalp in the rain, and returns the favour. 

“Never fixed you for a snuggler,” Duo comments into his hair.

“Look who’s talking.” 

They won’t sleep like this, Duo thinks. It’s not comfortable enough to keep up the whole night but Trowa’s hand fingering idly at his braid and making tiny bolts of feeling right up to his scalp is a pretty damn good way to start out. The tip of Trowa’s nose brushes his chest through the open v of the robe. Duo tangles up a foot in Trowa’s legs and is pleased to note that the height disparity means that he can comfortably get it in above the knee. Trowa grunts. 

“Not until morning,” he warns. 

“Fair,” Duo says, and somehow time stretches into breathing, into toffee, and finally, into sleep itself.   
___

The grass outside the trailer whispers with running water. The hill is draining. Lucky for them, the trailer has sat back on its haunches in the mud rather than get any idea about sliding off on an adventure with them, although that in itself poses a new challenge in how they’re going to get it out again. 

“We might be stuck,” Trowa says, paddling back in with dirty feet from checking the wheels. “She’s sunk a bit, and the ground’s soft. 

“Huh. About how long?” 

“Couple of days, as long as it doesn’t rain again.” 

It doesn’t look like it will. The sky is a smooth, clean wash of summer blue, full of promise. Duo comes over to stick his head out the door, while Trowa dries his feet. There are birds singing and everything out there. 

“Well, guess we’re not in any rush,” Duo comments, which is true enough. He fills the doorway to light a cigarette and stands half in and out the doorway to smoke it, passing it over between drags to Trowa, who smokes in between pulling his socks and boots on. “Heading out” 

“Figured I’d take a walk. Want to come?” 

“Duh.”

They climb the slopes behind the trailer, muscles pinging as they stretch and find points previously exerted. The hills wind upwards, never quite becoming mountains, but changing from meadow to peak all the same. The dry gullies of the week before are alive with water bouncing down, chuckling and stealing paths away where it can. Turning a corner, they alarm a flock of starlings out of some shallows, and the flick of water from their oily wings makes a split-second rainbow in the air. 

The hill reaches its last hurrah in the rounded hump of a knoll, smoothed bare of trees by the wind. The grass is courser, whipping around their knees, and full of tiny flowers, and brown birds that appear carolling upwards as if from nowhere. The top affords a view of no small magnificence. They stand, breath caught in the wind, which whistles round their ears and invigorates, chasing the cabin fever and the smoke away. It tugs at their hair, throwing Trowa’s into preposterous shapes and only teasing out flyaways around Duo’s face. 

They push their noses into the wind like a couple of dogs, squinting into a view that is spread carpeted beneath them all the way to the horizon. “Look,” Trowa calls, pointing. Duo pushes a shoulder in under his arm and looks along the flagpole of Trowa’s arm. Far and away there are clouds and a blur falling over where the river winds. 

“What’s that?” 

“Rain,” Trowa says, lowering his arm. It drops neatly around Duo’s shoulders. 

“Heading away.” 

“Yep. Off it goes.” 

“You reckon there’s ever a day where it doesn’t rain anywhere?”

“I figure if that ever happens, it’d be on the news. I never heard of a day like that before.”

“Me either,” Duo agrees, pulling on the hood of Trowa’s jacket to steal a cold-nosed, warm-mouthed kiss, for really no reason at all beyond that he can and always wants to, with the constancy of rain falling on earth.


End file.
